I used to use this site to create our weekly menus. As I understand it, you can pay for the current meal plan, but the archives are free. I, needless to say, used the archives. The recipes were delicious, and it was nice not to have to reinvent the wheel every week.
When I started couponing, I wanted to create a menu based on what was on sale that week, but I never did it. Too much work and time consumed. Instead, I chose to punt weekly. I think I'm getting pretty tired of punting.
By the way, here's the site I use mostly for couponing, but I also use this site.
So the next thing on my mind this morning is to figure out a somewhat efficient (in time and money) way to plan our family menu. When I figure it out, I'll share it. In the meantime, if you have any ideas on how to do this, please share. I'd love to know how to do this!
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Things on My Mind #2 - Food
Posted by Hesses Madhouse at 7:56 AM
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3 comments:
No ideas because I'm a punter, too! But thank you for leading me to these sites! I used to be a HUGE coupon cutter and trying to find the best deals at the stores. I found I was spending waaaaay too much time doing that. At times I think I need to get back to it as it would help a lot during these hard economic times. I'd love to hear any ideas you and others have to share!
I don't know if this will help or not because it is so simple you probably already do it. When I have ground beef, we happen to have plenty...remember the cows in our field, they are in our freezer now, I brown a bunch of it. Then we have speghetti one night and tacos the next and if you do enough the next night we have taco salad or build your own quesadilla. Bam! Three nights dinner done! Now I realize that is a ton of meat for your crew but I like the idea of doing the cooking once and then "repurposing" the meat. I will be interested to see what you come up with.
I think my method might facilitate shopping the coupons? I made a table of main course meals by major ingredient. For us, that's the carbohydrate (since we don't eat meat), because I don't want to have all pasta meals or all bean meals, I want to shake things up. On Friday afternoon or Saturday morning when it's time for me to make up the shopping list, I pick seven new meals, making sure to grab them out of the different columns/categories (pasta, bread, potato, tortilla/chip, rice). I'll even ask kids passing through the kitchen what they want to eat most from a certain list, and let them choose.
You could make your table according to whatever ingredient you wanted: beef, chicken, pork or whatever. And then when you see the coupons and ads and know what is on sale, you'll already have a list compiled of all the meals your family loves that use that major ingredient. Just pick a few, and you're off to the store.
I don't coupon. I probably need to, but our vegetarian foods almost never go on sale. Still maybe I could save on shampoo or something. But picking my seven main meals for the week and making up my shopping list is really easy.
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